New Orleans police spent Saturday investigating five shootings across the city, including a midday killing on heavily traveled North Broad Street in which a 24-year-old man was gunned down behind the driver's seat of a sport utility vehicle.

The five shootings left three people dead.

Together with the death of a 25-year-old man found fatally shot in the head Friday morning inside his home in the Village de l'Est neighborhood, Saturday's carnage brought the city's 2007 homicide toll to at least 37 people in 69 days.

By nightfall, police had no suspects or motives in any of Saturday's attacks, which all took place outdoors on New Orleans streets, from Little Woods to Esplanade Ridge and Uptown. None of the five shootings appeared to be random.

"Everybody who was harmed, it looks as if they were the intended victims," said Sgt. Joe Narcisse, a New Orleans Police Department spokesman. "Several of the individuals have criminal pasts."

Saturday's first shooting victim was identified by the coroner's office as Keyana Price, 21, killed by several gunshot wounds as she walked near the corner of Gov. Nicholls Street and North Roman streets at 5 a.m. with a 25-year-old acquaintance, who was wounded in the ankle.

At about 11 a.m., officers were called to the 7800 block of Venice Boulevard in the Little Woods neighborhood of eastern New Orleans, where they found a man dead in the roadway. The man, who had cropped hair bleached blond, was riddled with bullets.

By 2 p.m., police were working a crime scene that stretched over a swath of one of the city's major thoroughfares, North Broad Street.

At Esplanade Avenue and North Broad, the body of Glynn Francois Jr., 24, was removed from the shattered remains of a silver Dodge Durango that he was driving when he was shot. His sister, who was also in the car, grieved on the neutral ground, her white tank top stained with blood.

According to investigators, a maroon Dodge Magnum pulled alongside the Durango and its occupants opened fire, hitting the driver several times, at least once in the head.

Three men fled the Magnum, dropping an AK-47 assault rifle, police said. Francois managed to drive two blocks before crashing into a pole at North Broad and Esplanade. Police said his sister, Deone Francois, took a handgun from the Durango and hid it in a nearby convenience store.

Francois, whose most recent address was in Gretna, had amassed about 20 arrests in the past five years, including a number of armed robberies in the university area of Uptown in 2003. But throughout seven Criminal District Court cases, Francois beat all the charges, either by being acquitted at trial or when prosecutors dropped the charges.

In one case, Francois was accused of holding up young women and robbing them of jewelry in the 500 block of Hillary Street in the early morning. Police said he forced the women into an alleyway and made them disrobe, brushing a handgun over their bodies.

His criminal record also includes allegations of kidnapping, attempted murder and dealing crack cocaine and marijuana. In June 2002, he was acquitted in magistrate court on two counts of battery of a police officer. In October 2003, a jury acquitted him of armed robbery. About the same time, prosecutors dismissed a seven-count indictment against him that included sexual battery, armed robbery and kidnapping.

Francois was due in court April 13 to face an indictment on charges of possession of crack, stemming from an arrest six days before Hurricane Katrina. He had been free on $10,000 bond. Throughout his legal troubles, Francois was able to post bonds in several cases, including a $75,000 surety bond he put up on Sept. 18, 2003, in the seven-count indictment that prosecutors threw out less than a month later.

But Saturday, the young man was mourned by his family, including sobbing and distraught sister and cousins who gathered about the crime scene.

The victim's 28-year-old sister was taken into custody and booked with tampering with evidence. The woman fell to the neutral ground at one point, exasperated. She said she didn't want to spend "five hours" at a police station but would talk to detectives there.

"I heard shots, that was it," she said, before police escorted her away.

The Durango, which had spun around and lost its rear and side windows to gunfire, sat near a corner store. The driver's door was open, its window and interior stained with blood.

Police said the crime started at Columbus Street and North Broad, outside a small car wash. In the car wash's parking lot, at 1501 N. Broad, detectives used a white sheet to cover an assault rifle. Officers said they didn't want it to disappear while they worked the case.

Two cars, lightly crashed together, were parked outside the car wash: a maroon Dodge Magnum with Texas plates and a taupe Chevrolet sedan.

The Dodge that Francois had been driving was listed as a rental car from a Houston agency, according to a search of online databases. The Magnum is registered to a Houston man, records show.

Francois' last arrest was Nov. 7 in Jefferson Parish, in the 3100 block of the S. Interstate 10 Service Road in Metairie. He was booked with possession of more than 28 grams of cocaine with the intent to distribute, drug possession with the intent to distribute, possession of drug paraphernalia and firearm violence.

While NOPD officers, crime scene technicians and FBI agents -- who last month started teaming up with local homicide investigators -- recorded evidence from Francois' killing, police received a fourth call of a shooting.

This one was Uptown, in the 2100 block of Foucher Street, near South Saratoga Street, where a man was reported shot and wounded. No details were available Saturday.

By 6 p.m., a fifth shooting was reported, at Fern and Colapissa streets. Police arrived after a man was shot several times, including wounds to the hand and back. The man was in the 3000 block of Fern when a blue car approached him and someone inside opened fire, police said.

The coroner's office is asking for the public's help in identifying the man found dead in Little Woods. Chief investigator John Gagliano described the man as 5-feet-6 and 150 pounds with green eyes and short bleached blond hair that was originally dark.

The man had a dark beard and mustache, each trimmed, and wore blue jeans, a black shirt and tan work boots. He also had four tattoos: a skull on his inner, upper right arm; a skull with a top hat on his left arm, along with a monsterlike bird; and a hand holding a sphere around the grim reaper with the name "Warren," all over a strand of barbed wire.

Anyone with information about the five shootings is asked to call Crimestoppers at (504) 822-1111 or toll-free at (877) 903-7867. Callers may remain anonymous and can receive a cash reward of up to $2,500 for information leading to an indictment.

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Staff writer Bob Ussery contributed to this report.

Gwen Filosa can be reached at gfilosa@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3304.